This endeavor, as the saying goes, is a learning experience. As in the sense of a button I saw years ago, which said, “Oh, NO! Not another learning experience!”

If I mention one other datum, you might have a better idea comprehending my initial statement. This endeavor is also an exercise in OCD. These entries are crossposted to four different blogging sites — Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogspot, and WordPress, not to mention that notifications of new entries are posted to my Facebook page. Learning the various quirks of each site, and trying to overcome said quirks, can be just a little . . . well, I would have to say that the feeling is somewhere between “irritating” and “annoying.”

Getting things to look the way I want on each site has probably been the first learning curve. As you might well imagine, each of the sites has its own ways for customizing the look of an individual blog. So far, Xanga has been the easiest to nudge, tweak, or otherwise sledgehammer into looking the way I want. I selected its most no-frills approach, and after that, it was merely a matter of adjusting the colors. I may still need to adjust a color or two a little, but I think I have that site looking the way I like it.

With LiveJournal, I believe I may have looked at just about every theme they offer before I selected one — and looked through them again when I decided that I did not like my first choice after all. I need to adjust the color on the links, but I believe that it should not be too difficult a task.

I am still trying to find a look that I like on both Blogspot and WordPress. I have not yet found anything that I can say that I like; it is more a case of going with something that I do not overly dislike. I may have to spend a few hours looking at all the alternatives on each site, then seeing how I might be able to customize a choice.

(Incidentally, if you are curious enough to wonder how each site looks, that can be easily satisfied. My username on each site is the same — “jamesnorcross.” Simply go to the address bar of your browser, and replace the site where you are currently viewing — be it Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogspot, or WordPress — with one of the others.)

While getting the look right for each site has been interesting, I have been more surprised by how the last two entries looked when I posted them. I write the entry first, then copy and paste the text into a “New Entry” page on each site. And I adjust the time so that it is the same for each site. (I did mention that this was an exercise in OCD, did I not?)

When I posted “Sum Qui Sum, Et Qui Omnis Sum,” the entry included the code for the results of the online quiz I took. With Xanga and LiveJournal, the images of the results posted just as I thought they would. With Blogspot and WordPress, however, the images did not appear. Instead, what you see are the blocks of code that should have been translated into the images. There must be a simple reason why everything did not post correctly, but I am still trying to determine what that reason might be.

I had a different surprise when I posted “The Pledge, According To Red And The Duke.” Each site handles the posting of links a little differently. LiveJournal makes the links automatically; Xanga and Blogspot need a little nudging to change plain text into a link. The big surprise was when the entry posted on WordPress. Instead of the expected links, what actually appeared were the videos from YouTube.

As I said, I am trying to master multiple learning curves at the same time, and hoping that I will not be too surprised by what I might see once I click the “Save” button.

Before I get to the main point of this entry, I suppose I should start with a little information about myself.

My political leanings are on the conservative side. I suspect that Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity would all say that I am to the left of them, but I also suspect that they would not find any differences of opinion worth that much of a quibble.

With that out of the way, let us proceed to the meat of this entry.

During some recent explorations of the blogosphere, I encountered several entries that posted the results of a quiz that determined the blogger’s political identity. The results I encountered stated, “My Liberal Identity Is . . . ,” but I was curious enough to click the link to About.com. I saw that they had a companion quiz to determine one’s conservative identity, I decided to indluge my curiosity, and I took the quiz.

What were my results? Well, I believe the correct phrase at this point is, “Drumroll, please”:

I must confess that on a few of the questions, I could have gone with more than one answer. for instance, one question asks, “If you could time-travel to any historical event and bring one thing with you, what would you choose?” My answer was “September 10, 2001 — with a no-fly list,” but I could have just as easily answered “The beginning of the 1990s bull market — with today’s stock quotes” or “Ronald Reagan’s inauguration — with a cloning device.” On the other hand, when asked, “If you were a candidate for political office, what would your theme song be?”, the only answer that was right for me was The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

I took the quiz a second time, giving mostly other answers to see what my results would be. This second time, the results were as follows: